The NAM Reaches out to the Congressional Black Caucus on Energy

As we mentioned yesterday, energy is our focus this week, and will be our focus for a very long time — until we start seeing energy prices begin to level off. Yesterday a group of small and large manufacturers met with Congressional Black Caucus staff to brief them on the economic and jobs impact that increasing energy prices could have. Here’s a link to our press release on the day’s events.

“Energy prices will soon start to have an impact on food and home-heating bills,” said one of our small manufacturers, whose natural gas bills have risen 100 percent (!) since August. It’s not going to be pretty this winter.” These folks also met with Sen. Burr (R-NC) and the staff of Sen. Dole (R-NC) as well. As we’ve said, if people are shivering this winter, they should thank an environmentalist. They are paying the prices — literally — for 30 years of moratorium. Yes, we need to conserve and yes, we need to find alternative fuels, but in the meantime we need to be opening new areas to exploration. Haven’t we learned anything? No nuclear plants started since the 70’s, no refineries built since the 70’s, the highest natural gas prices in the world.

If the Outer Continental Shelf were opened to exploration, it’s a start. It has has 420 trillion cubic feet of recoverable resources and 77 billion barrels of oil. That’s enough natural gas to heat more than 100 million homes for 60 years and enough oil to fuel almost 85 million cars for 35 years.

As the saying goes, “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.” The environmental movement in this country has not led, — in fact, they’ve been obstructionist — haven’t followed. Time to get out of the way.